


due disclosure

by inverse



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 21:44:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4977646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverse/pseuds/inverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>family bonding time.</p><p>(modern college AU. a stranger attempts to talk to kagami about their family histories. he's not sure he likes it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	due disclosure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [twisted_sheets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twisted_sheets/gifts).



> for mel, who requested kagaaka for the prompt meme! apologies for the very uninspired, backdated-to-2013 kagaaka mother-centric headcanons with a very strong oedipal flavour. i always wanted to write something about their mothers (or lack thereof). it was just as well that i found out that it was your birthday yesterday, so consider this a belated gift -- hope you like it!! :D
> 
> this takes place in an alternate universe where the miragen never existed, and kagami never returned to japan.

“She died when I was ten,” Akashi said. “As you can see, my father never remarried. I think he was quite taken with the notion of burying himself in his work. They were both from politically important families and so perhaps he thought that it would besmirch the family name to take another wife.”

Kagami didn’t know how to respond. At least he could see his mother every year at the occasional visit, and, growing up in America where many of his classmates kept in touch with their divorced parents, he was accustomed to such a lifestyle. It was not the happiest of childhoods, what with the confusing spate of silences from his father and the absences from his mother, beginning with weeks, and then continuing into months; often his father would give his expectant six-year-old self a wan smile and say, “Mom’s busy with work, she’ll be back real soon, alright?” During that time he was taken care of by his grandmother (who has now, fifteen years on, long since passed away), and being a child who was not particularly bright he ate it all up until his mother stopped coming back and he moved to the States with his father. He had suspected what was going on. Occasionally the same storyline would play out on the late afternoon soaps that his grandmother would watch as she babysitted him, the missing parents, the clueless child, it all fit; but he never once asked, either out of a naïveté that things would return to normal in his surburban Tokyo family or a fear of upsetting his increasingly distant father. The next time he saw his mother, in Boston, he was already twelve. She brought another man with him, kind, tall uncle Fabian, who smiled at Kagami as if he were his own; and she showered him with gifts and apologised tearfully and profusely, over and over again, and Kagami thought of just how much trouble he would cause for all parties involved if he did not react well. And so all was forgiven. More often than not it was better to be accomodating.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, and watched Akashi take another sip from his teacup.

Akashi was somewhat of a celebrity in these parts. He was an overachiever’s overachiever – at twenty-two, they were both the same age, but Akashi was already pursuing concurrent master’s degrees in commerce and economics, whereas Kagami was still stuck trying to finish his deferred undergraduate programme while juggling his NCAA basketball scholarship. There wasn’t anybody on campus who hadn’t heard of Akashi, and if there was, they were probably living under a rock. Akashi was involved in so many activities, both academic and non-academic. He did research for several eminent professors; he had an impressive résumé of articles published in journals addressing topics ranging from politics to psychology; he campaigned for the student union; just last semester he headed a United Nations student volunteer team to the Khmer Rouge Trials; when he was doing his undergraduate at Keio University back in native Japan he captained the judo team, representing the country for a brief period of time, and now, studying in the States, he was an active and valued advisor to the college’s judo varsity.

Kagami had no fucking idea what someone like Akashi wanted with him, or why somebody like him was worth Akashi remembering at all. There was, sitting in front of him from across the table, somebody here who was obviously destined to become a future member of the Japanese Diet; all Kagami could recall was that they had briefly met at a local Japanese Assocation meeting, and he had no idea who he was making small talk with until “the final-year postgraduate business candidate” contacted him a week later and introduced himself by name and said that they should meet for coffee. They spoke in English, because Kagami no longer remembered much Japanese. Akashi’s command of the language was masterful, but there was an artificiality to his accent and the way that he so carefully structured his sentences that barely betrayed the fact that he was not a native speaker.

“You mentioned that your parents were no longer together when we talked last week,” Akashi continued, tilting his head slightly. His voice was confident, loud and clear above the bustle in the busy coffeehouse.

“They are,” Kagami confirmed, but he was unsure whether he’d actually mentioned the fact – it wasn’t something that he’d bring up to a total stranger. He did recall saying his father was working in the New York office of a Japanese investment banking firm, and maybe Akashi did ask, “What about your mother?”, and he’d followed up with “They’re divorced”, or “She left us when I was seven”. Things like that would slip his mind. He said them so often.

“I merely thought it would be good for us to share our experiences,” Akashi elaborated, giving Kagami another one of those balanced, serene smiles that bordered on the warm side of businesslike. “This is not my first time in America, but it is the first time I have lived abroad by myself for an extended period of time. I have never talked about the issue of my family history at length, not even to my closest friends, though of course they are all aware of the general situation. Perhaps it was because my father took the matter in such stride that I did not consider it a necessity to ruminate over it either. Neither did any of my next-of-kin.” He poured himself another cup of tea from his pot of Darjeeling and stirred it absentmindedly, the teaspoon moving like the oar to a raft. “It was only after we talked the other night that it occurred to me that I have never met anyone else who has lost a parent at a young age. Even more serendipitously, we are the same age, hail from the same country, and attend the same college. Don’t you think that it is a very strange coindence? Pardon me if you are uncomfortable with this topic. I can stop at any time. But I had the feeling that you were very well-adjusted to your circumstances.”

Kagami eyed his coffee. It had gotten lukewarm a while ago and he no longer felt like drinking it, and besides, Akashi’s curious, hawklike gaze made him nervous, and he didn’t need any extra caffeine in his system. The fact that Akashi was so articulate about such a personal matter made him feel a little tongue-tied. The words wouldn’t come out properly because he didn’t know if he was saying the right things. “Don’t worry about it. I mean, uh, I never really gave it much thought. Like you said – it never occurred to me to think about it too much either. Whatever happened happened and I accepted it.”

“Did you take after your father? Your height,” Akashi cut in. “You play for the NCAA, if I remember correctly.”

“Occasionally, yeah,” Kagami replied. “I’m a little taller than my dad. He used to play basketball, too, in Japan, when he was in high school.”

“My father was more of a traditionalist when it came to sports,” Akashi smiled – again, that calm, impersonal smile of his. “Judo, kyudo, kendo – those were the activities I was constantly exposed to when I was around him. Later I developed a deeper interest in judo, and, as you may know, I represented Japan briefly in the sport. But – this brings to mind – some of my fondest memories as a child involved my eight-year-old self and my mother; as a child I took a slight curiosity towards basketball, and sometimes she took me to the park some way from my own home to play with the other children around the neighbourhood. Of course these activities ceased after she passed. But don’t you think it was a pity? That I never really discovered if I had an aptitude for the sport.”

What Akashi said made Kagami recall something that he thought he had long forgotten. Perhaps it was a half-complete memory, the gaps in which he had taken upon himself to fill so that he remembered it to be more incandescent than it actually was; he was three years old and he was holding a basketball, a toy, made for small hands, its textured surface rough against the tender skin of his small fingertips. But there was something that he remembered for certain, that the ball was coloured red, white, and blue, each colour printed in rotations on its six faux-leather panels. Something that was possibly fabricated: him, sitting in the backseat; his father, driving; his mother, riding shotgun, turning back to look at him, saying, “He’ll become as fine a player as you were, won’t he, Dai-san?” Fall was coming, and the weather had begun to cool down, so Kagami had thrown on a blazer on his way to meet Akashi. But now he found that he was starting to sweat beneath the jacket, beneath his t-shirt, the heat collecting where his ribs met his sternum, pooling down the sides of his neck like warm water. 

Akashi fiddled with the cufflinks on his sleeve, an understated stainless steel barbell with a square design. When he looked up there was a wry expression on his face. There was now something cold and brittle in his almond-shaped eyes that made Kagami want to turn away. The usual smile on his lips had twisted itself into something far less neutral, far more knowing; far less distanced, far more magnetic.

“People always said that I resembled her more,” he said. The fingers that he slid over his sleeve were long and tapered.


End file.
